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Mike's Minute: The Crusaders made the right choice

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 12 Jun 2019, 10:18AM

Mike's Minute: The Crusaders made the right choice

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 12 Jun 2019, 10:18AM

COMMENT:

There is a substantive lesson to be learned from the Crusaders decision not to change their name. 

That lesson is common sense, level heads, taking a deep breath, and trying as hard as we can to break this obsession so many have fallen into, of overreacting to everything

MeToo has a lot to answer for. MeToo, Time's Up, and every other cause that like so much of what we overreact to today, started out with the best of intentions but very quickly got swamped by the crazies and turned into a shambolic, virtual-signalling mess.

The Crusaders have nothing to do with the Christchurch attack. Nothing, not even a little bit.

And yet, instead of being logical and sensible, too many piled on and decided we needed some mad blanket move to encase them in the carnage, and have them somehow pay a price for something they literally had nothing to do with.

The bow that was drawn was spectacularly and ludicrously long and the lesson here is the bit we never saw. Where was the leadership? Why was virtually anyone who could have sensibly stood up and taken a stand either running for cover, or pretending they didn’t or couldn't have a view, or pretending they'd suspended their view until the obligatory review and market research was conducted?

Why was everyone so so scared of being honest?

The only people who called this were regular ordinary everyday New Zealanders who don't have a patch to protect, or a job to keep safe, or a reputation constantly under attack from noise making hard-liners looking for trouble and headlines.

From the moment the idea of a name change was mooted the reaction was fierce and it was singular, "what the hell has a rugby team got to do with a madman and a gun?".

Answer: Nothing. Nothing then and nothing now.

But that didn’t stop them pussyfooting around it, suggesting there might need to be a change.

From offering up the preposterous excuse that the imagery had been a bit of an issue for a long time.
What crap!

I've been a Crusaders fan since the Crusaders were invented and no one has ever mentioned anything about Muslims and crusades, or horses and white supremacists, or the name being linked to oppression and war. They’ve just accepted the Crusaders are the name of a rugby team same as the Highlanders, Chiefs or Hurricanes.

It was almost as mad as pretending Brenton Tarrant didn’t have a name.

Yes Christchurch was enormous and yes reactions to events of that size are powerful, but that doesn’t excuse lack of leadership, in fact, it’s a very profound reason for more leadership, and leadership that has the ability to stand in the middle of a storm and preach sense.

They got there in the end with the name, but it should never have ever been a part of it to start with.

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